Always beware the Spanish Inquisition

- Start by shooting the messenger
- When that fails; tell everybody the messenger is a horrible foreigner anyway.
- Keep distraction going by whipping up Xenophobia and not discussing 45% youth unemployment in your own Country and said causes.
- Try and get a facebook campaign going too, to show your are modern, with it and therefore not incompetent.
- Get the security servcies involved and start threatening your critics with....

The sad thing is, the UK's Time-in-the-Sun of the Bond markets may not be far away, so I will use this post as a memo to check of Peter Mandelson's statements at that time.

Tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of our pensioners have decamped to Club Med and southern fringes of Eastern Europe.

I thought from the very beginning of this exodus, 20 or 30 years ago, that as long as geopolitics remained hunky dory they were in for a pleasant retirement. I also thought, and this is the reason I emigrated to north UK when I retired, that should things cease to be hunky dory, then our expats might be in for a very unpleasant time.

What has amazed me over the years is that the possibility of hard times, persecution, scape goating etc. never occured to any of these retirees.

It's early days in this depression, and things could get a lot worse in paradise. I wonder if a future socialist government would welcomed all these old Brits (mostly Tories) back to Blighty with the same enthusiasm they reserve for today's immigrants from the Middle East (mostly Labour)?

The only real solution is to devalue the Euro and France/Germany ain't up for it.

the UK's turn will come, but with a floating currency the Pound may take the strain. Europe today is very, very messy. But I feel little sympathy for countries, including our own, that have lived beyond their means and are now wailing.

CU said: "I feel little sympathy for countries, including our own, that have lived beyond their means and are now wailing."

I agree entirely. But there is one mitigating factor for the ordinary UK joe: he is not an expert on finance and he has been systematically misled by the politicians, Tory as well as Labour, but especially 'no-more-boom-and-bust' Brown.